Federal chief information officers need to know just a little bit more to be successful.

The CIO Council added nine new Clinger-Cohen Act core competencies, such as IT program-management leadership, vendor management and social media.

The council's IT Workforce Committee Thursday released the updated list of competencies and learning objectives.

"The 2012 Clinger-Cohen Core Competencies and their associated learning objectives will be used as the foundation for IT course and curriculum development, as well as the development and consistent implementation of IT workforce policy initiatives across the federal government," the document stated. "Periodically, the federal government reviews this core body of competencies in order to ensure critical knowledge areas impacting information resources management are captured. Changes in this updated version reflect new statutory and regulatory requirements, as well as areas requiring greater emphasis due to new policies and strategies (e.g., the recently released presidential strategy on Digital Government), continuous changes in technology, and other evolving agency IT/cybersecurity mission requirements."

The CIO Council first published a list of competencies in 1997, one year after the Clinger-Cohen Act became law.

For the first time, the CIO Council also mapped the competencies to the new Office of Personnel Management's executive core qualifications (ECQ), where applicable.

"Attainment of these qualifications is required for entry to the Senior Executive Service," the document stated. "The mapping is provided to support multi-purpose leadership development for IT management and executive positions."

Among the newly added skills, CIOs must be able to discuss the pros and cons of letting employee freely use social media, describe how Web 2.0 is changing collaboration and the detail that goes into a social media policy.

Around vendor management, the skills now include developing service-level agreements, creating vendor-management policies and discussing how best to manage contractors.

The 71-page document also details the skills around everything from knowing how acquisition works, both in the pre-award and post-award stages, to evaluating supply-chain risk management to cybersecurity roles, responsibilities, legislation, policy and reporting requirements.